ADJOURNMENT

Senator McGRATH (Queensland) (19:44): Sixty-five billion dollars—that's how much poorer working Australians have become during the last four years of this Labor government, and that's only when we're talking about income taxes. Parliamentary Budget Office analysis shows that, under Labor, Australians have paid an estimated $65.3 billion more in personal income taxes over the last four years because tax thresholds have failed to keep pace with inflation.

Whilst Labor have been busy creating a cost-of-living crisis and stoking inflation, they've also been busy taking a bigger slice of working Australians' wages through bracket creep. This is $65.3 billion that would not have been collected if tax thresholds had simply been indexed to inflation. Make no mistake, this is a Labor tax on inflation and the inflation is due to Labor's policies.

This is a government obsessed with taxing Australians—taxing us when we're born, taxing us while we're alive and taxing us when we die, just taxing us nonstop, 24/7—and, because of Labor's active inflation agenda, this tax grab is only going to get worse. In Labor's first full financial year in office, bracket creep created around $9 billion in additional personal income tax.

Last financial year, that figure exploded to $23.9 billion. That is an increase of more than 2½ times. It means bracket creep was generating an estimated $65.5 million in additional income tax every single day last financial year.

Think about that. Every day, while Australian families were trying to make ends meet, Canberra was collecting another $65.5 million because inflation had pushed people's wages into higher tax brackets. Across the last four years, it's equivalent to $2,350 for every Australian man, woman and child.

And this inflationary Labor tax is hitting Australians when they can least afford it. Right now, Australians are paying more for groceries, more for electricity, more for insurance, more for housing, more for petrol—and the list goes on. When Australians work harder and more often and receive a pay rise just to keep up with those higher prices, the tax office takes a bigger slice of their income.

That is the insanity of bracket creep. Australians are paying more for everything and, if they are lucky enough to get a pay increase, that money goes straight into Mr Chalmers's pocket for him to splurge—probably on another $6 million for a golf course for the Prime Minister. That money could have gone towards a mortgage, a power bill, a grocery bill, school costs and petrol.

Instead it goes to Mr Chalmers and Mr Albanese and they benefit from the very inflation they're creating, and Labor gets more revenue without having to officially announce a tax hike. Mr Chalmers doesn't have to stand before the Australian people and say, 'We're increasing your taxes.' He's just allowing inflation to do his dirty work. The Australian people deserve better, and that's why the coalition has a clear alternative.

It's called the Tax Back Guarantee. Under our plan, income tax thresholds will be indexed to inflation. This means, when inflation rises, tax thresholds rise with it.

This is not a temporary election sweetener. It's structural reform to the taxation system. From 2028-29 the bottom two income tax thresholds will be indexed to inflation, protecting around 85 per cent of income earners from bracket creep.

From 2031-32, the top two thresholds will also be indexed, protecting all taxpayers. It means Australians do not automatically pay more tax simply because prices have increased. And it means that, if a future government wants to increase Australians' taxes, they'll have to do it honestly.

Within four years, the Tax Back Guarantee will deliver a tax cut of more than $1,000 a year to a typical taxpayer. That's the difference between Labor and the coalition. The coalition sees Australian wages as money Australians have earned and should be allowed to keep, where Labor sees inflation as a source of additional revenue.